The All America City

In the All American City, TV and newspapers proclaim
one disaster after another until we don’t know
our butt from a post-Russian hole in the ground
and somewhere along the line we forgot what a good Sobrett
tastes like, or a bus smell going somewhere.
Wasn’t it ‘86 when the Challenger’s teacher
exploded in all the children’s faces
and nobody was to blame and nobody came to say
there may be a problem here?
Now we walk in dream and the keyboards click
no sin to behold, no chance to test the wind.
Sirens wail in the wicky-wacky extravaganza
and behold, oh giant guns, humongous cannons, why
we all clap and big old hungry us gives the world the finger
with stars in our eyes like some lost Plato
not to mention our deficit savings accounts and now
the sweet children cock their ears for some sign
of relief, gaze from windows at the milk running
through the streets and we scream Bang Bang.
We dance on irradiated moons and cremate what’s left
Oh yes, oh, yes, we have sung the song
at all the curbs and suburbs in all the All America Cities
our America Zen salute snapping and drifting
at the unfolding, curling, whopping, whooping flag
that hangs on the hot-plated, cooked up bone scraping
surprise it turned out to be this time.